The Boredom of Ramfree17

Internet is bad.

Feb 12

ErinGarbage, Work 4 Comments

And employees are rotten. This is the reason why companies need to institute proxy filtering technologies to ensure that productivity is enforced. You won’t find any arguments from me regarding this matter. The company is paying me my salary thus I am expected to render 8 productive hours each day (I don’t have overtime pay benefits).

What I am fussing about is if the company would put such mechanism in place then they should create a fast exception mechanism since there are still good sites in the Internet. This has been a gripe I had with the Websense mechanism that have been installed since last year. The company opted for the “Filter everything except…” route which means that they are religiously applying the WebSense filter updates that trickles down daily. WebSense is actually good in the sense that they have about 90% accuracy in classifying sites if we are talking about generic rule sets. However since we are in the IT development business then the rules need to be customized which WebSense is actually recommending.

Now here is the fuzzy part. Imagine you are working in the migration of a technology used by a client to a fairly new technology. What would be your primary resource for the troubles you are encountering? If you are fairly tech savvy then the answer would be Internet, right? What would you do if you suddenly found out that the sites that may have the answer to the problem causing you to have hair loss has been blocked by your company’s proxy filter? My answer would be to file for an exemption. What if I then told you that you would receive a reply within 45 days for a resolution to a problem blocking you from completing your 7-day task? What I actually did was raise hell about it but I do not have the flair of a seasoned statesman, or a Dilbert manager. My attempts to have a fast-reacting exemption system is met with standard “those sites have information that could impact our security” type of explanations.

The problem I think is that those actually doing the security doesn’t realize that we are working on a broad fields of technology. What is wasteful in say manufacturing might not be in software development teams. They say that they are aware on the complexities of having a diverse development clients but I don’t think they understand it at all. Awareness doesn’t guarantee understanding.

Before you judge me as being idealistic, know that I have pointed out alternative ways such as creating a separate team whose task is to validate site exemption request submitted to an internal site. I even volunteered my free time for that endeavour. But apparently it will cost too much time and it is far easier to block all message boards and mailing list archives. Usenet archives? Blocked. All blogs and virtual hosted sites? Blocked. Sourceforge development utilities? Blocked. JUnit for ensuring correct code modification? Hah, dream on. They even went so far as block IBM and Eclipse information sites. DAMN IT, WHAT ELSE REMAINS?

//waiting for google.com to be blocked

ciao!